Masterarbeit / Master's Thesis
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MASTERARBEIT / MASTER’S THESIS Titel der Masterarbeit / Title of the Master‘s Thesis „Populism and technocracy The political style of party communication in Austria“ verfasst von / submitted by Veronika Heider, BA BA angestrebter akademischer Grad / in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (MA) Wien, 2017 / Vienna 2017 Studienkennzahl lt. Studienblatt / A 066 824 degree programme code as it appears on the student record sheet: Studienrichtung lt. Studienblatt / Masterstudium Politikwissenschaft degree programme as it appears on the student record sheet: Betreut von / Supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Sylvia Kritzinger Danksagung Ich möchte an dieser Stelle denjenigen Dank aussprechen, die mich während des Verfassens dieser Arbeit unterstützt haben. Allen voran möchte ich mich bei Prof. Sylvia Kritzinger für die Betreuung meiner Arbeit be- danken. Sie nahm sich immer Zeit für meine Fragen und Anliegen und ihre wertvollen Rat- schläge haben maßgeblich zur Fertigstellung dieser Arbeit beigetragen. Auch die Teilnehme- rInnen ihres Masterseminars gaben mir immer hilfreiches Feedback. Ich möchte auch Prof. Anke Tresch, Gastprofessorin an der Universität Wien, und Michael Hunklinger danken, die den Vorläufer dieser Arbeit ausschlaggebend beeinflusst haben. Unterstützung bekam ich auch von meinen ArbeitskollegInnen am Fakultätszentrum für Me- thoden der Sozialwissenschaften. Jana und Lena, ohne euch wäre die Arbeit nicht so, wie sie jetzt ist. Danke für euren Input und eure Korrekturen. Meinen guten FreundInnen und meiner Familie: danke für euren Beistand und euren Einsatz. Ihr hattet stets ein offenes Ohr für mich und habt für willkommene Abwechslungen gesorgt. Anna, Kathi, Lisa, Kathi, Nina, Stefan, Christine und Marlene, danke! Großer Dank gebührt auch meinen Eltern, für ihre andauernde und vielfältige Unterstützung. Und Paul, du bist mir stets zur Seite gestanden. Du hast alles mit mir durchdacht und durchgemacht, hast die Arbeit gelesen und korrigiert und mich stets motiviert. Danke. i Contents 1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 2 Approaches to populism: from populism as ideology to populism as style ................. 4 2.1 Populism and democracy ............................................................................................. 4 2.2 Binary approaches to populism ................................................................................... 5 2.3 Gradual approaches to populism ................................................................................. 8 3 Theoretical background and hypotheses ...................................................................... 12 3.1 The political style: populism and technocracy .......................................................... 12 3.1.1 Appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘expertise’ ........................................................... 14 3.1.2 Mannerism .......................................................................................................... 15 3.1.3 Mediation of the social ....................................................................................... 17 3.2 Differences in the political style across communication channels ............................ 17 3.3 Differences in the political style across parties ......................................................... 22 4 Data and Method ............................................................................................................. 26 4.1 Case selection ............................................................................................................ 26 4.2 Data collection ........................................................................................................... 28 4.2.1 Pre-election debates ............................................................................................ 28 4.2.2 Press releases ...................................................................................................... 29 4.2.3 Parliamentary debates ........................................................................................ 30 4.2.4 Party congress speeches ..................................................................................... 30 4.3 Analysis and operationalization ................................................................................. 31 4.3.1 Appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘expertise’ ........................................................... 32 4.3.2 Mannerism .......................................................................................................... 33 4.3.3 Mediation of the social ....................................................................................... 34 5 Results .............................................................................................................................. 35 5.1 Differences across channels ....................................................................................... 35 5.2 Differences across parties .......................................................................................... 37 5.2.1 The mainstream parties in-depth ........................................................................ 37 5.2.2 The non-mainstream parties in comparison ....................................................... 44 5.2.3 Comparing the mainstream and non-mainstream parties ................................... 50 6 Conclusio .......................................................................................................................... 52 7 Literature ......................................................................................................................... 55 8 Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 59 iii List of tables and figures Table 1: The populist and technocratic political styles – their characteristics and features .... 14 Table 2: Ostiguy’s high-low dimension of politics .................................................................. 16 Table 3: Guidelines of the qualitative content analysis ............................................................ 32 Table 4: Comparing the dominant (populist or technocratic) features across communication channels ...................................................................................................................... 36 Table 5: Comparing the SPÖ’s dominant (populist or technocratic) features across communication channels ............................................................................................ 38 Table 6: Comparing the ÖVP’s dominant (populist or technocratic) features across communication channels ............................................................................................ 41 Table 7: Comparing the FPÖ’s dominant (populist or technocratic) features across communication channels ............................................................................................ 44 Table 8: Comparing the Greens’ dominant (populist or technocratic) features across communication channels ............................................................................................ 48 Table 9: Overview of the text bases ......................................................................................... 59 Figure 1: The range of external and internal communication channels ................................... 20 Figure 2: The range of formal and informal communication channels .................................... 21 v Introduction Populism is on the rise – all over the world. Front National in France, One Nation in Austral- ia, Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain and Donald Trump in the USA are the most prominent examples for populist movements or movers (Frölich-Steffen & Rensmann, 2005). However, populism is not a new phenomenon in political science. Researchers have studied populism around the globe, throughout the centuries and a variety of definitions has been put forward to understand it in its entirety. In the last decade, Cas Mudde’s (2004) minimal definition of populism as an ideology was often the basis of theoretical and empirical analyses. Like many definitions in political science, there are contestants. Paris Aslanidis (2015) uncovered con- ceptual, methodological and measurement challenges when defining populism as an ideology. Previously, parties were either defined as populist or not, but recent studies show the useful- ness of thinking populism not as black and white, but as having grey areas. It has been shown that even populist parties vary in the use of populist statements in their communication (Rooduijn, de Lange & van der Brug 2014) and that a binary approach to populism is not suf- ficient to grasp the full complexity of the subject. Taking this into account, this master thesis will be based on Moffitt and Tormey’s (2014) definition. The authors define populism as a political style that allows the differentiation between populist behavior and the opposite, tech- nocratic behavior. Whether an actor is populist or technocratic or where on the scale she/he can be located, depends on the features of the style. Populists appeal to ‘the people’, show bad manners and use crisis to garner support, whereas technocrats appeal to expertise, show good manners and put emphasis on stability and progress (Moffitt, 2016: 46). Populism as a politi- cal style acknowledges the possibility that it is a more